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Meredith Grey
Meredith Grey Shepard is an attending general surgeon at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. She is the daughter of famous general surgeon Ellis Grey and Thatcher Grey. She did her internship and residency at Seattle Grace Hospital (later Seattle Grace Mercy West Hosptal), during which she met her best friend Cristina Yang and future husband Derek Shepherd. She is currently married to Derek and they have a daughter, Zola Grey Shepherd and a newborn son, Derek Bailey Shepherd. Early Life When Meredith was much younger, Thatcher, her father, would bring Meredith to Seattle Grace to see Ellis, her mother. And when she got her Anatomy Jane doll, (with 24 parts to take out, with the extra parts to simulate pregnancy), she would bring the doll along with her to the hospital. When Meredith uncovered the dool again later, while she and Derek were unpacking the boxes in the house, she somehow ended bringing the doll to work with her, where Anatomy Jane got her into a surgery to treat an inoperable tumor. Richard Webber was noted to be a tad disturbed upon the sight of the doll again, as he was reminded of the times when Meredith was a child, and he was still having an affair with Ellis. Meredith's parents' marriage was troubled, although a part was due to Ellis spending too much time working and normal everyday problems. But a large part was due to the fact that Ellis was having an affair for years, with one of her colleagues and best friends, Dr. Webber. Their marital issues proved too great and eventually Thatcher left the home when Meredith was five years old. He tried to visit her on several occasions, but eventually after getting nowhere, stopped and subsequently started a new family with his new wife, Susan Grey. When Thatcher left Ellis, she continued her relationship with Dr. Webber, although he still had a wife, Adele. Although Richard tried to conceal his relationship with Ellis, Adele always knew, so if she was in their company, she would just play with Meredith. Eventually, Richard broke off his relationship with Ellis, as he felt he was being the better man, by walking away from Ellis, with Meredith only meters away, riding on a carousel. Shortly thereafter, Ellis accepted a fellowship opportunity at Boston General. She relocated to Massachusetts with Meredith, and Thatcher lost all contact with his daughter. As an adult, her only childhood memory of Thatcher was giving her cereal in the morning. In 8th grade, her English class had to read Romeo & Juliet. Then for extra credit, their teacher Mrs. Snyder made them act out all the parts. A boy named Sal Scafarillo was chosen for Romeo and all the girls were jealous of Meredith who was chosen for Juliet but Meredith was not happy and complained to her teacher that Juliet was an idiot because she falls for the one guy she knows she can't have. Then she blames fate for her own bad decision. She told her that if Juliet was stupid enough to fall for the enemy, drink a bottle of poison and go to sleep in a mausoleum then she deserved whatever she got. Therefore, at the age of 13, she was very clear that love like life is about making choices. Meredith later described her high school years to Cristina by saying "I wore a lot of back. Had the whole angry pink hair thing going on. Wouldn't have been caught dead at prom." She went to college at Dartmouth, and despite excessive drinking and partying, she graduated. Following her graduation, she had difficulty holding a job, due to her partying lifestyle. Ellis suggested Meredith find another direction in her life, as she told her that she didn't have what it took to survive medical school and making it in the surgical world. Following an argument about Meredith's path, Meredith spent two months traveling in Europe with her best friend Sadie Harris, who also hated Ellis. She returned and moved into the old house, when her mother was diagnosed with early- onset Alzheimer's Disease, whom she expressedly only allowed Meredith to know, while keeping the news of the condition from all the rest who knew her. Her mother's condition gave Meredith the incentive to go to medical school. Cristina later helped diagnose Meredith as having a case of 'severe abandonment issues', as the cause of her relationship problems with Derek, due to the fact that Thatcher left her, when she was a child, and that Ellis was absent for most of her childhood, due to her work and the affair she was having with Richard. Drowning in Elliot Bay Meredith, Izzie, George, Alex, and Bailey go to the site of a massive ferry boat accident. After Meredith finishes stabilizing a patient's badly wounded leg with the help of a little girl just by the water, the man panics and pushes Meredith off the edge into the bay. Later, when Derek is shown Meredith's fate by the little girl, he jumps into the water and then retrieves a pale, seemingly lifeless Meredith. He tries to perform CPR in the ambulance, but she does not respond. The doctors all try to revive her, but she flatlines. Then Meredith enters a seemingly state of limbo in her mind, where she interacts with deceased acquaintances like Denny, Dylan Young, Doc (her dog), Bonnie Crasnoff (the patient who had been stuck on a pole), and her mother, Ellis Grey. Finally she leaves this state of limbo, and comes back to life slowly. Meredith recovers, but Derek remains concerned that Meredith was a good swimmer, and perhaps she didn't try hard enough and gave up. Shooting at the Hospital At the end of the sixth season, Meredith reveals to Cristina that she is pregnant. She also plans on telling Derek, but the mass shooting intervenes. The husband of a deceased patient, Gary Clark, enters the hospital and shoots many people, killing many, including Dr. Reed Adamson and Dr. Charles Percy. The hospital is on lockdown, because of which Meredith is not able to tell Derek about her pregnancy. Gary Clark also shoots Derek in the chest in Meredith's prescence. Cristina has to do his surgery herself, barring Meredith from the OR. When the shooter enters the OR, Meredith enters too and tells him to shoot her. However, he ends up shooting Own, albeit minorly. While tending to Owen's injury, Merediths suffers a misscariage. After the shooting, all involved are made to go through a psych consulting to be cleared for surgery. Meredith is the last one to be elected. She is cleared by Dr. Andrew Perkins only after she admits her pregnancy and miscarriage. Plane Crash In the end of season 8, Meredith along with Derek, Mark, Lexie Cristina, and Arizona are involved in a plane crash on their way to Boise to help in a conjoined twins case. Lexie dies due to a part of the plane crushing her, and Meredith is horrified and mourns. But other than that, afterwards, she is the one who is the least affected physically (along with Cristina) and mentally (unlike Cristina). She does not show her feelings towards Mark or Lexie's death very openly. Derek Bailey Shepherd's Birth Despite Derek's warnings to slow down, a heavily pregnant Meredith couldn't help but join in on a surgery at the beginning of the superstorm. However, Meredith was forced to leave when there was a risk of explosions in the OR. She talked to Alex about beating up Jason Myers, only to find out that Jo was the one who beat up Jason. She followed Jo into a staircase, where Jo promised she would never let Alex take the fall for what happened to Jason. As Jo left, a construction worker told her that they were done with the grinder in the OR. "Then why aren't I up there?" she angrily asked, and as she ran up the stairs, she slipped and rolled down the stairs. She sent Derek a message and got checked out by Connie Ryan, and she promised that everything was fine with the baby. While the surgeons were preparing the hospital and the storm hit Seattle, Meredith's water broke. Meredith was admitted, but she had to wait for Connie because she was busy with other soon-to-be-mothers. Cristina who found it typically for Meredith to go in labor during a superstorm, stayed by her side while Derek went to look for Connie. He found her, but as she did a check-up on Meredith, she told them that there was face presentation. As she mentions that a C-section is necessary to deliver the baby safely, the lights went out and the back-up generators didn't kick in. Even though they were first hesitant to have a surgery performed in the dark, they realized there wasn't any other option. The surgery went well, and Derek take his newborn son to the NICU to make sure everything was fine. While closing up, Connie got called away for another mother in need, and she and Meredith trusted Shane to close up. However, Heather and Shane discovered a lot of bleeding, and Meredith realized that she had an internal bleed caused by the fall on the stairs. Before going unconscious, Meredith instructed Shane, who found out that the spleen was bleeding, how to stop the bleed. Meanwhile, Heather went to find Dr. Bailey to assist them. Bailey overcame her fear to operate and pulled Meredith through. Meredith was kept in the OR until she was stable, and later moved to a room in the maternity ward, where Derek and Zola visited her and their new faily member. (The Perfect Storm)" During a board meeting in her room, Meredith was informed by the others what happened during the superstorm. She tried to help out as much as she could, but Derek and the others told her to rest after her major abdominal surgery. While the others left, Cristina stayed behind to chat a little until she got paged. Though it was said at the meeting that the ER had to close, Meredith got confused when she witnessed Stephanie and Jo trading supplies to use in the E.R. When a stressed Alex enters her room, Meredith managed to calm him down by letting him hold her son. He told her about Richard and Heather, and he gave her the baby back to her so she can get calm again herself. Meanwhile, Cristina and Bailey started arguing over the course of treatment for Richard, only to find out that Richard has listed Meredith as his medical proxy, forcing her to choose between Cristina's and Bailey's plans. She decides to do so by relying on science, and asks to rerun some tests. While waiting for the results, Callie sat down in her room to have a little chat about how she was doing. When Richard's results came back, Meredith decided to side with Bailey and let her operate, which Cristina had adviced not to. While Bailey operated on Richard, Meredith asked Cristina to admit that the decision was right, and Cristina does so. "(Seal Our Fate)" Meredith later talked with Cristina and Alex about Richard's decision to make her medical proxy, wondering if she was in his will too. After Richard's surgery, Owen came to Meredith's room to tell her that Bailey closed Richard back up once Catherine started yelling at them from the gallery. Meredith also consoled a sad Derek, who lost Heather in surgery. After Meredith ordered Derek to go home with Zola, who had spent enough time in daycare now, Callie and Sofia came in to drop some stuff. Callie told them that she moved out of the apartment and that they were going to stay at a hotel for a while. Meredith decided to let Callie stay at their house, and she later told Arizona, who had no idea where Callie and Sofia were, that they were at her house. While trying to fall asleep, the interns bothered her to ask for help finding Heather stories to tell Heather's mother, and Meredith told them what she had told George's mother after he died. When the interns left, Jackson came in to tell her that his mother was planning on moving Richard to another hospital. Alex and April came in too to talk about their problems, and as they left one by one, they all refused to bring her a wheelchair. However, she somehow got herself a wheelchair and went to Richard's room in the ICU with Bailey. Bailey still thinks they should open him back up, and Meredith made the call to book an OR for Bailey. Later, back in her room, Cristina and Alex talked with Meredith about medical proxies, and it turns out Cristina actually doesn't approve of Meredith's decision for Richard. After Bailey's surgery, Catherine still wanted to have a second opinion. Meredith told her that Richard chose her to make his decisions, and not Catherine. They start arguing as Richard opens his eyes, and Meredith enthusiastically greets him. "(I Want You With Me)" Personality She is intelligent, compassionate, hard-working, has good medical instincts, and a natural flair for medicine. Other than that, Meredith is also easily distracted and indecisive, and oftentimes outspoken. And unlike Derek, who saw everything in distinct shades of black and white, Meredith tends to see things in shades of gray, which Carolyn Shepherd remarked to her son that was what he needed, while she was visiting Seattle, in Sympathy for the Devil. However, this difference in viewpoints have culminated in what could be a breach in their marriage, at the finale of season 7, Unaccompanied Minor, where she messed up Derek's Alzheimer drug trial. She secretly accessed the pharmacy, where the trial drugs were stored, and subsequently swapped the placebo for the actual drug, for Patient #122, aka Adele. And when busted by a drunk Alex, who had seen her behaving suspiciously, she much later confided in Cristina that she felt that her actions were justified, as Adele was Richard's wife, and she should do something since Adele was about to have saline injected into her brain, and the trial drug sample could help her from becoming a 'vorked out lump', in her own words. The couple subsequently got into a argument in the changing room, where Derek argued that it was Alzheimer's, a disease that she could potentially have, and one whose progression he was trying to stop or cure, while at the same time espousing that everything was black and white, a right and a wrong. Meredith responded that the situation was much more complicated than that, as it was Richard and Adele. Relationships Romantic Derek Shepherd Finn Dandridge Family Zola Grey Shepherd Derek Bailey Shepherd Lexie Grey Ellis Grey Thatcher Grey Susan Grey Doc Friendships Cristina Yang George O'Malley Izzie Stevens Alex Karev Sadie Harris April Kepner Callie Torres Richard Webber Owen Hunt Professional Miranda Bailey Addison Montgomery Mark Sloan Preston Burke Erica Hahn Career Notes and Trivia Gallery